Constellations
by Bainaku
Summary: A story of destiny:  two soldiers find one another over trials, tears, and time.  Seiya and Usagi pairing, to be set mostly in Crystal Tokyo.  Rating will change as chapters are added.  Updated:  8/7/10!
1. Prologue:  Fighter's Resolution

**Commentary: **This story implies and will eventually feature Kou Seiya and Tsukino Usagi as a couple. If you are a diehard fan of Usagi and Mamoru, I still encourage you to keep an open mind and give this tale a shot. I'm not in this to bash Mamoru—I like him well enough. I simply believe in diverging destinies, and different kinds of love, and threads of red string that tie together more than two people across time. I hope you can believe, too.

This is dedicated to **YoukaiYume**, whose beautiful artwork featuring destined couples, especially this one, continues to inspire my love of Sailor Moon. Regardless of whether you ever see this: thank you. I hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

_"We're allowed to dream of something besides our duty as a soldier, right?"_ – Kou Yaten, episode 192

**CONSTELLATIONS**

**Prologue: Fighter's Resolution**

He strums his fingers over his guitar strings, his eyes fixed on empty space, unseeing. His soul yearns. His companions feel it and shuffle like birds, sometimes toward him and then away from him again, their feathers ruffled. He is their leader—they trust him. But they worry too.

His heart calls to another. Its song is strong enough to circle worlds.

"Seiya," Taiki attempts. Further words fail him. He licks his lips and glances sidelong at Yaten, whose eyes have narrowed into cattish slits of pure aggravation and dismay.

"Uh?" Seiya responds. He looks up at them both and smiles. Though he means to reassure them with it, he only adds fuel to the fire of their concern. It's a dreamy smile, full of wistful longing and a bone-deep ache that his two friends can see just as easily as a flashing neon sign. His fingers strum again: the note they produce glows in the air, a jewel held to the light.

Yaten grinds his teeth, his hands clenched over his knees; Taiki winces and turns his head away. In these stray sounds, they can hear Seiya's song shifting from a search to a serenade: from their princess to a rogue schoolgirl with pigtails and a big mouth and absolutely no sense of grace or tact. In a way they can't blame Seiya—after all, her flaws aside, they like the girl well enough too! Yaten knows there's good in her because she cares deeply for her cat, it's true, and her antics shatter Taiki's serious demeanor into sheer shivering laughter. Her white-diamond light shines from her every pore, so brilliant and unexpected that it takes their breath away. In her sprinkle-specked smile they see the same kind of hope that drove them here, to this rural backwater planet, from across the spirals of the stars.

But to fall in love with her! Only Seiya could do that!

Yaten makes a clicking sound with his teeth, an art he has perfected since its inception in his early childhood. It makes their leader frown. His fingers pause in their caress of the guitar strings; his cornflower eyes flicker, sharpen. "What?" he demands.

"That girl," Yaten murmurs, locking eyes with that leader. "That stupid—!" His voice falters and he bites his lip, jittering back a little in his seat. His silver hair bristles.

Seiya stares at him, blinking, bemused. "Oi," he cuts in, but Yaten refuses to let him finish.

"The princess," Yaten manages in a weak but cutting hiss. "Have you forgotten her?" His thin, wiry body shudders with the force of the question. Taiki touches his shoulder and he shrugs it off, leaning forward despite his normally restricted nature. Seiya leans away, startled, but even so their flat chests brush. The friction must upset Yaten, because tears bead in his bright viridian eyes and he finishes, his voice a hoarse shadow of its usual clarion ring, "Are you singing to someone else? That dumpling-headed girl from school?"

A storm boils into existence over Seiya's features. Taiki sees the potential thunderclap on his lips and pushes his two friends deftly apart with his own body before it can boom. As with Yaten's little clicking noise, he's been doing this since early childhood too, and the space between them feels to him as snug as his own skin.

"Calm down," he advises them gently. He looks down into Seiya's furious face: teeth clenched, eyes burning, two spots of color riding high on his scissor-sharp cheeks. He feels Yaten's fingers twine and twist in his ponytail, and the press of the man's other palm in the small of his back is like a hot star. Taking a deep breath, he waits. Sometimes they get angry enough to claw at each other around his hips; sometimes they reach through the handles of his elbows. Once Seiya even climbed him like a tree. He's had enough experience wresting them from one another to be ready for anything—he'll pull them apart, no matter what, if he must.

But gradually Seiya's features smooth over. The fuming flush fades from his face—his mouth quirks into its usual gamine grin, and he slides around an apprehensive Taiki to face Yaten directly. Yaten is right on the verge of crying, his collarbones blotchy and hitching, his eyes swimming with tears. The desperate anger and disquiet in his expression soften the last bit of brittle brine in Seiya's gaze, and the leader takes Yaten in his arms and embraces him. It's a little like hugging a constipated tiger, complete with high risk of hideous maiming. This time, though, Seiya is lucky, and Yaten leans gingerly into him.

"Come on," he assures the smallest member of their trio. He chuffs his chin through Yaten's hair. "I like Odango—I think she's special. I won't lie about that." A pink frost laces over the bridge of his nose, and Yaten stiffens a little as he looks up through his pewter lashes, suspicious. "There's nothing wrong with liking someone, is there?" Seiya finishes. He sounds defensive.

"There is if you like her more than the princess," Yaten growls sullenly. His lip wobbles and he saws his teeth over it, and Taiki cups his elbow, and Seiya tightens his arms. They all miss her terribly in that moment as they think of her smile, so soft and bright and warm. The smallest recalls how her laugh lit up everything like a tideline horizon; the tallest recollects the sincerity of her words and the glint of sunrise in her hair. Their leader, last of all, remembers the brush of her fingers and the strength of her scream when their world ended.

For those scattered seconds, they yearn together.

"Don't be stupid," Seiya soothes Yaten. "I love our princess."

His statement is so true that the air in the room is almost raw with it. It seems to comfort Yaten, at least, and after another short moment the silver-haired idol pulls briskly away and straightens his uniform.

"Good," he says. He's trying to be gruff and aloof—it works with his fans, but his friends see through it as they see through glass, and Taiki sighs and Seiya chuckles. Rubbing a gold button with his thumb, Yaten mutters, "She's really obnoxious, isn't she? In a clueless kind of way, I mean. Unbelievable."

There's no denying that he's talking about Usagi, and the exasperated fondness in his observation, not to mention the truth of the matter, are the only things that keep Seiya from breaking Yaten's pretty little nose.

Fortune smiles on Seiya yet again, because Yaten misses the annoyed twitching jaw muscle and fist-clench of his fellow Starlight. Apparently deciding that he's had enough love and cuddling for now, the green-eyed youth announces, "I'm going to make a sandwich," and slips from the studio. Taiki and Seiya are left alone in its padded confines, between walls that bounce around acoustics and emotions equally well.

Letting out a breath in an explosive gust, Seiya offers Taiki a small, cracked smile, places his guitar lovingly back in its case, and mutters something about going to get some air. He's gone in a flash of blue-black hair and crooked elbows, hands stuffed in pockets. His crescent earring winks like a talisman.

Taiki waits: for one minute, two. The fan blades of the studio churn through dead air, giving off an amniotic _whup-whup-whup_. Soon he follows Seiya to the roof.

He finds their leader silhouetted against the city lights, his legs planted in a firm V, fingers steepled in rigid triangles over hips, head thrown high. He's humming something under his breath, and Taiki can't be sure, but he thinks it might be one of their songs.

He goes to Seiya on silent feet until they are side by side. Taiki's shadow falls over the shorter man. He folds his arms, gazing out over Tokyo: its winking expanse burns and blossoms and bubbles with life. The streets teem still with evening commuters; to the west, the N-line choom-chooms toward its station and sends a pale gray wisp of smoke streaking skyward. A mother yells at her child and somewhere in the nearby park, a small dog yaps incessantly and chases a candy wrapper.

"Seiya," Taiki allows for the second time this evening.

Seiya turns to look at him. They lock eyes, lavender on blue: they peer into one another, these two friends who have exchanged secrets and diaries and disgust over boys since the days of scabbed knees. The question hangs between them, unspoken but certain: _You love our princess—but you love __**her**__ too, don't you, Seiya? _

The tallest idol sees the answer he suspected in Seiya's proud, shameless gaze.

He stands there a moment more—perhaps he's waiting for Seiya to look away, or to say something. He taps a foot. His forehead creases and there's a tightening in his chest, something like envy, something like rage. He is sorely tempted to remind the head of their trio about duty—about their mission, about the princess—but knows he'd have better luck attempting a conversation with a telephone pole. Seiya has seen destiny done up in a sailor uniform and blonde pigtails, and really, what can Taiki say to that? At last he throws up his hands in a small, helplessly exasperated shrug and turns to retrace his steps, disappearing down the well of the utility staircase.

Seiya stands alone on the roof. He looks for a long time at nothing, though his eyes sweep the cityscape thrice and again. His brow beads with sweat despite the cool breeze, and his heart throbs so furiously that he can feel it in his throat. He picks up humming again, toneless, idle; his fingers worry the rims of his pockets. Eventually he takes a seat and hooks his hands over his ankles, his thoughts running and roaring between his temples, and he wonders what his princess would say.

Seiya has always given his everything for her, his planet, his friends. The trait earned him his name as a soldier—Fighter—and got him scars on his knuckles. It forced him here in the wake of his planet's annihilation, leaving no time for grief or sorrow. It led him to suggest a male disguise on Earth—to, in fact, encourage Taiki to modify Seiya's _henshin _brooch first, lest the transformation from one physical body to another go wrong. So devoted to his mission and to those he loves, he has never put his wishes before the needs of others. He has sung with fiery passion during every Three Lights rehearsal and ensuing concert: until his chest heaves, his eyes water, and his voice leaves him only words in a sandpaper rasp. He has allowed his soul to stretch, to shout out across the heavens of this lonely world.

He never expected Odango to answer him.

He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, pillowing his chin on top. He sighs. When he caught sight of her that first time, he felt a part of his secret heart shudder and cry out—and when he heard her voice, and her laughter, oh no! He knew he was in trouble! Hooked! Snared! Caught! Captivated!

She's got him like a firefly in a jar. Even so, he doesn't mind, and he knows that he'll burn as brightly as he can for her until there's nothing left of him but a smoldering ruin.

Because she heard his call in a way no one else ever did, or could, and she came to him, even if it was accidental. She saw his need for a friend and fulfilled it as easily as breathing. She has embraced him in joy and fear; she has taken his hand and held it gently, and grabbed his ponytail to yank it hard. They have danced together, and ridden rollercoasters, and crouched in a closet with hips brushing and knees knocking, and she once even called upon him to kill the queen of all cockroaches. She fills all the empty spaces inside him he never knew he had—not until they found one another. She finishes him, the other half to his whole.

She is all he's ever wanted for himself alone, and he has no idea what to do about it. So he thinks again and again, over and over: what would his princess _say_?

He hides his eyes from the city, pushing his face down into the cradle of his arms, as he contemplates. He knows now is the worst time to have suddenly cultivated a romantic interest. The fate of this planet hangs in the hands of the maiden for whom he longs: is it really his place to distract her from that fact? Furthermore, their princess is still lost—back across the constellations, their planet lies in silent devastation. They have problems enough on their own, the war on this particular world be damned.

Still, Seiya can't help what his heart wants, and deep within himself—despite his irritation at the timing, and the anxiety of his friends, and the tenuous circumstances altogether—he is not sorry for his feelings. He knows no greater joy than that which seeps into him whenever he sees her: her buns bobbing, her uniform wrinkled, her eyes wide and wandering and wonderful. He would trade it, that silver spark Tsukino Usagi inspires in him, for nothing.

He thinks his princess would be proud of him. She has _always _been proud of him. Why would now be any different? That realization hits him hard, so much that he nearly reels. He puts his head in his hands, runs his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair, and sucks in a breath that's almost a sob. He thinks—no, he _knows_ she would tell him the same thing regarding this situation that she has every other time he's found himself in a snit. She would tell him to give it his best shot.

She would tell him that she called him Fighter for a reason.

Lifting his head a bit, Seiya turns his gaze toward Juuban. He can see his school from here, though only just. Its clocktower glows like an open, all-seeing eye.

His hands fold into fists; he pumps one in the air, mute but firm, and climbs to his feet. He likes a challenge, and Seiya is no fool. He knows this is a battle wherein all odds are against him. He has a princess to find, a planet to revive—she has a galactic warlord to fend off, a world to protect, and some deadbeat boyfriend somewhere who holds her glass heart in stonewall hands.

Stealing it won't be easy.

This is a fight he might not win.

Under the stars from whence he came, Seiya smiles.

He'll die trying.

* * *

**Notes: **This is only the sparse beginning of a much longer story, the majority of which will take place in Crystal Tokyo. Per usual, I adore critiques, comments, and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to leave any or all of them. Send me mails if you like—talk to me, ask me questions. I've been told I'm very friendly!

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	2. Chapter One:  Wheels Spin Round

**Commentary: **This story implies and will eventually feature Kou Seiya and Tsukino Usagi as a couple. If you are a diehard fan of Usagi and Mamoru, I still encourage you to keep an open mind and give this tale a shot. I'm not in this to bash Mamoru—I like him well enough. I simply believe in diverging destinies, and different kinds of love, and threads of red string that tie together more than two people across time. I hope you can believe, too.

This is dedicated to **YoukaiYume**, whose beautiful artwork featuring destined couples, especially this one, continues to inspire my love of Sailor Moon. Regardless of whether you ever see this: thank you. I hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

_Hey, hey  
Did you ever think  
There might be another way  
To just feel better__  
Just feel better  
About today_

- "Change Your Mind," Sister Hazel

**Chapter One: Wheels Spin Round **

Fighter tells her goodbye.

She has seen civilizations crumble, and held friends while blood bubbled from their lips and life leapt from them as shadows circling candleflame. She has changed genders, and philosophies; she has, in her short time on Earth, learned how to entirely speak and write a new language. She has unraveled the mysteries and intricacies of wearing a jockstrap. She has given up pride in favor of graciously accepting the screaming adulation of hordes of slathering fangirls.

She has killed her fellow sailor soldiers.

Still, this goodbye is the hardest thing she has ever known.

When it is over, she and her friends and their princess: well, what else can they do? They go home. In mere seconds, they teleport across time and tension-tethered highways of starlight. They soar over the heavens of the universe, leaving behind them a battlefield victory and the faint scent of tears.

Almost seven months to the day after leaving their planet to follow their monarch to Earth, the Starlights appear on Kinmoku again. On a hillside, nearing evening, a breeze stirs the saw-grass in a rippling swirl. In the next instant there are four figures there, all women, one tall, one noticeably well-dressed, three in warrior's garb. They flicker into being silently and stand thus too. The most vibrant of the group has her hands fixed, white-knuckled, over the wrists of two of her companions, and they support her as they look together out over their hushed, muffled world.

_Awhoooo_, the wind sighs, welcoming them home.

What was once a glorious capital city and a burgeoning spaceport unfolds beneath the hillside like an oozing, infected wound. Parts of it continue to burn even now, glow-glower orange embers. The air is thick with the smoky haze of fires that no hands were available to extinguish. Soot swirls and eddies on the breeze, dark snowflakes. That breeze brings with it too the smell of death and decay, and there are bloated, swollen bodies in the streets. The stiff fingers of some stretch skyward in a rigid plea for help that never came.

Kakyuu seesaws between Fighter and Maker. She clings a moment more, and her ruby eyes eat up her pale face in their all-encompassing horror. However, she knows her responsibility, and she releases her soldiers and takes a single tottering step toward the city wherein she was born, schooled, kissed, crowned. Three other sets of pensive eyes watch her.

She falls to her knees on the second step, folds her arms about herself, and retches. Her headdress skitters away and her tears fall in sudden streaming torrents, pattering the dry, silted ground. Her own eyes watering, Healer leans down to rub Kakyuu's shoulders, and eventually she and Maker tug the princess back to her feet. Fighter retrieves the headdress, and the three of them carefully fit it back over Kakyuu's fiery hair. None of them say anything—because there are no words for this, no way to measure the guilt and grief they feel, and especially no point in trying.

For a long time after, they look and they wait. It is ultimately Fighter who starts down the hillside, picking her steps carefully. The rest follow her, and they form a small, sorrowful caravan in their slow expedition through the city, past burned out shops and hovercraft half-buried in wreckage. As true evening settles its cape across their ravaged motherland, turning the sky into one huge yellow-purple bruise, they finally set foot in what remains of the palace.

Maker trembles; Healer struggles not to vomit; their princess is pale, so pale. Fighter, for her part, has an expression on her face both great and terrible, a kind of apathy that comes from an inexplicable inner strength and a steel stomach. She leads them down the colonnade, past the scorched and twisted corpses of their fallen comrades. Kindly, she avoids the kitchens, where the innocent staff was burned alive by Galaxia's bracelets, and where the odor of charred flesh still lingers.

Fighter takes the princess to the tower at the center of the palace. It is a sacred area, a stone pillar ten stories tall that juts up toward the skyline like an ivory tooth. Within its rotunda twin bells wait to be rung. Before Galaxia came, it was Kakyuu's chore and privilege to ring the bells every morning, adding in with their chime her own personal song. The beautiful dawn melody was what roused Kinmoku's people—when there were still people, of course, to rouse at all.

The Starlights must move fallen beams to get to the door carved into the side of the holy pillar, but they manage. Prying open the barricade to the tower's staircase, Fighter motions her princess inside. She wants Kakyuu to ring the bells again, and to sing. "If there are any survivors in the city," she tells her stricken monarch, "they'll hear you and come."

"We left them," Kakyuu whispers back. Her voice cracks and bleeds with self-loathing, and she gives her head a single vicious shake. She carries the death of her people on her shoulders like a cross. "Fighter—_I _left them. How do you know they'll come? Why would they?"

Fighter reaches to catch Kakyuu's soft hands in her own gloved ones. She squeezes them, gently but firmly. She gazes into her monarch's strained crimson eyes and smiles. It's hard for her to do that, because Fighter feels like she has lost two worlds, one here in this dead place and one far away, a scape of golden hair and crystalline skyshine eyes. But she is dedicated—and after all, loss does not stop love.

"You came back," she murmurs. "That means they will too."

Healer and Maker nod in agreement. Kakyuu looks between her three soldiers, one by one, and at last she smiles too. She tips her head to them in gratitude and turns to glide up the staircase in the center of the pillar. The Starlights watch her until she is lost to sight.

They stand in a loose semicircle at the door as though to guard it, but around them the palace is a graveyard, its most threatening inhabitants a mushrooming population of field mice in the pantries. Healer pinches the bridge of her nose with fingers that shake, trying to ignore the dark smears on the walls, the smells of decomposition, the overwhelming evidence of what their inability as soldiers led to in halls once pristine and resplendent. Maker breathes through her mouth and attempts to determine how many dead they have seen—how many bodies too broken to receive liberated Star Seeds. Calculations once comforted her. Now the souls of the people behind the numbers cry out in her head, friends and foes and family, and she wishes she could pull the plug on the machine of her mind.

Fighter only waits.

The moon rises in silver splendor over the cusp of the battered land. It climbs the sooty rungs of Kinmoku's sky slowly, a weary creature. Only when its entirety is visible over the horizon do the bells in the tower begin to toll.

They sob, sigh, serenade, and soothe, and the voice of the princess weaves through their tones as a sewing needle does through fabric. The song echoes over and washes across the shattered realm, softly at first and then louder, the keening knell of thousands dead. They soar, the notes of the bells and their ringer—they shine, they burn.

And it rains. As the bells crash and crescendo, the sky cracks open to spill forth its sorrow, and the fires left to burn wink out. The smog in the air loosens, dissipates; the dry ground sucks up the moisture like a sponge. By the downpour's end, tiny red flowers—drops of blood—have opened in the tangled mast of the capital's meadows.

Fighter steps out into the shower's final seconds and turns her face heavenward. She realizes that the devastation around her is almost total. Like Maker, she has been counting bodies. She owns within her soul a double layer of grief: for her slaughtered people, and for the princess of another solar system she left behind.

As the rain soaks her, she is admittedly tempted to think the worst.

However, warmth crackles and kindles in her heart even in the midst of such ruin. Tsukino Usagi sparked it, nurtured it with laughter, kindness, smiles exchanged over sweets. For that reason, it is a flame that will never burn out.

It is hope.

Usagi taught Fighter how to believe that some good can come of any situation. The thought of her smile is enough to remind the warrior now that this one is no exception.

Fighter lifts her arms and opens her hands, the palms up, fingers splayed. Water runs into her gloves. She remains that way for a moment. To her fellow Starlights, she looks to be praying: and she is, hard. When the silent plea has left her, she drops her arms again and turns her face to the city. It is hard to tell whether the glisten on her cheeks is rain or tears.

A handful of seconds flicker past, and Healer and Maker slip suddenly between the columns to join their leader. She has begun to shake and shiver, her sides heaving. They grasp at her, worried, voices rising in question, ready to hold her up should her legs be at the end of their strength.

But no—Fighter is laughing. Bitterness, joy, woe, relief: all color the sound that claws its way from her throat into the dredge of the rain. She wraps her arms around her middle and quakes with the force of it. She leans into Maker, thrusting her face into the taller woman's shoulder; she drags Healer against her until there is no seam between them.

"Look!" she cries, hoarse, and points out over the wreck of their nation.

Maker squints into the fading wet. Soon she is laughing too, and crying, and though Healer is the last to see, she joins them eventually. They sink into the sodden grass, clutching one another.

All across the city, those precious few who lived to hear the bells ring again are lighting lanterns.

* * *

**Notes: **This is only the sparse beginning of a much longer story, the majority of which will take place in Crystal Tokyo. Per usual, I adore critiques, comments, and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to leave any or all of them. Send me mails if you like—talk to me, ask me questions. I've been told I'm very friendly!

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.


End file.
